


maybe you'll call me someday

by asiren (meliorismo)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: AU: meeting ur ex at a coffee shop, M/M, Not The Traditional Kind, Past Relationship(s), Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-21 18:39:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12463560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meliorismo/pseuds/asiren
Summary: Jongin and Kyungsoo were married, sort of, but now they are not.Life goes on.





	maybe you'll call me someday

**Author's Note:**

> thank god for @ harry styles with from the dining table

Jongin rose his eyes from the book he was reading, the loud noise that the front door always did when someone opened it breaking his concentration. The waitress, a nice 20-something lady named Ae-Kyung (probably another student at the local university) plastered on her professional smile, that were kind of terrifying, and stood up from behind the counter. Jongin glanced at the person who had just entered, a little intrigued. Didn’t he look a little familiar, the profile, the eyes? 

The stranger, then, untied his scarf — long, green —, and Jongin breath stopped right there in the middle of his throat. 

The newcomer —  _ Kyungsoo  _ — walked slowly before stopping at the smallest table on the left corner, where he could see the door and his back was facing the wall. Jongin knew the routine. He continue to do that months after Kyungsoo left him, as if a knee-jerk reaction he couldn’t shake off. The book on his hands felt suddenly very heavy. 

“Sir!” Ae-Kyung bowed mildly at him, just the right side of passably respectful. “Do you want the menu?” 

Kyungsoo muttered something to himself, surprised. His eyes were always like the one a startled owl would have, but it went worse when he was taken by surprise. Kyungsoo looked genuinely as if you had just almost killed him by heart attack even with the mildest interactions. Jongin used to find that very endearing. More to the end, though, he found in himself to hate it, as in everything else about Kyungsoo. 

“No, that’s not necessary.” he smiled at Ae-Kyung, who didn’t look very impressed. Jongin mentally patted her on the back; Kyungsoo’s smile was hard to resist. “I will have one small”,  _ cheesecake _ , Jongin thought to himself,  _ and a latte.  _ “red velvet cake and a bottle of water, please.” 

Jongin blinked.  _ Oh.  _

(he didn’t see that one coming)

It hit him, suddenly, that it had already been two years. Kyungsoo probably had changed, kind of. A little. Jongin himself couldn’t tell truthfully that he was the same person. It felt like it was yesterday, though. He still could feel on his hands the weight of Kyungsoo’s suitcases while he helped carry all that down the four flight of stairs, and then the hall and finally the cab that was waiting on the street. It had been what their friends called an “amicable break up”, but they only thought that because Jongin lied to them all. 

_ Do you miss me? _ , Jongin wanted to ask him. He wanted to stand up, walk there and look Kyungsoo right into his owlish eyes and say,  _ When you left, did you look back? On that cab? Or did you just made small talk with the driver, and forgot all about me immediately?  _

But he couldn’t. 

He wouldn’t. 

(Maybe he could just stay right that way, waiting for Kyungsoo to inevitably look at him. And then, do— what?) 

Ae-Kyung walked there, boldly, rocking the unpopular brown lipstick and belonging to a tv show. Jongin had a little of a crush on her, the way you could have a crush on your slightly older neighbour. She was holding the small plate with the red cake and the bottle of water, emanating waves of judgement. Who buys bottled water anyway?, she looked like she wanted to ask. What kind of person does that? 

Kyungsoo continued blissfully ignorant. He didn’t know her enough to identify the multiple layers of sarcastic auras she was capable of projecting. Or how to differentiate them from the usual, no-bullshit one. 

Jongin was honest to himself, if to no one else. He could admit he missed Kyungsoo, a little. Sometimes. When the rain was warm or when he passed by the park where they used to go every sunday to walk their dog properly (the dog that Kyungsoo took with him when he moved out). Sometimes he would be on the bus, for example, and look outside to see a man who could be Kyungsoo, maybe, the mouth or around the eyes, and think  _ Oh. Still.  _

It didn’t mean anything, because that story was already over and the book closed. The final wouldn’t suddenly change. 

He was curious, though. If Kyungsoo didn’t eat cheesecake anymore, and started buying bottled water, but would still sit on the corner with his back facing the wall — he was a different person, a little? Was he still a jerk, or he got better? Was  _ Jongin  _ still an asshole? Or did he got better, too?

Did time made them different or just ruined their sense of style? 

In that moment, Kyungsoo’s eyes met Jongin’s, because he didn’t resume his reading. He was just there, his hand over the page, staring at his ex like a creep. Their eyes met, from opposite sides of the coffee shop, with Ae-Kyung as uninterested witness, and Jongin could see when Kyungsoo realized who he was looking at and his mouth moved, a small, breathed sound, 

_ Oh.  _

_ (You).  _

**//**

“I think we should call her Ogboon.” Kyungsoo told Jongin, wisely, while they stared at their new dog in a way that even the pup knew meant  _ what do we do? what do we do? _ The internet, after a brief research, told them ‘first step: name the pet’. So, following its wisdom, they were naming the pet. “Because her eyes are very, you know. Jade.” 

Jongin thought for a moment, before nodding decisively. The key for life, he had learnt, was acting as if he always knew what the hell he was even doing. “Good enough for me, good enough for you, good enough for our dog.”

“Welcome to the human world, Ogboon.” Kyungsoo said to her, smiling a little around his eyes. “Hope you like it.” 

Jongin looked at his serious face — Kyungsoo’s, who hopefully was the closest thing he would probably ever get of a husband, because marriage certificate was for when he wouldn’t have how to pay his health insurance anymore  — and thought,  _ Oh.  _

_ It’s him.  _

**//**

Jongin waved at Kyungsoo, as awkwardly as you could possibly expect. Kyungsoo blinked, painfully slow, before waving back. Jongin panicked for a minute,  _ should I go there? should I make some signal for him to come here? should we ignore each other’s presence? should I leave this place entirely? _ , before Kyungsoo rose from his seat, took his pretty cake and his water, and walked over to Jongin’s table, where he sat at the one other chair without any ceremony at all. Not even  _ hi.  _

“Are you sure about this?” Jongin said, before he could stop himself. “Because. You know. The wall.” He pointed helpfully to all the open space around Kyungsoo’s chair, waiting for him to freak out. 

Kyungsoo blinked at him, looking tired and a little slow. “I’m seeing a therapist.” he answered, after an awkward pause. “The other table”, he pointed at where Ae-Kyung was passive-aggressively rubbing a cleaning cloth. “is just a habit. One that I, uh, have to break someday soon.” 

_ You were always paranoic.  _ Jongin wanted to rub it in his face, meanly.  _ I always told you to seek professional help.  _

But he didn’t. Because he wasn’t mean to Kyungsoo anymore. They were nothing to each other after two years apart — not even acquaintances. He had lost the right, kind of. One he never had to begin with. 

“It’s good.” that is what he told Kyungsoo, trying for mild. “I’m happy for you. I noticed that you are eating different things, too.” 

“Eh.” Kyungsoo smiled, a little. Proud of himself, Jongin noticed. He should. For Kyungsoo, it was the biggest step. “Last week was the first time.” They stood there, looking at anywhere else but each other’s face, for what felt like infinity — nodding randomly each few seconds, like everything wasn’t already weird enough. They couldn’t help themselves but make it worse, an instinctive reaction after a very failed relationship that took months to die. “You’re reading Kafka, again?” 

“The short stories.” Jongin answered, somehow defensively. “Not the novels.”

“So you didn’t change that much.” Kyungsoo said, thoughtfully. “You hated the long ones passionately.”

“Because every single nice thing about Kafka’s writing just goes out of the window with the excessiveness—” he started, heated, before stopping mid-rant, blinking a little. He almost rose from his seat and left the building entirely in outrage. It was like, maybe, a little, the old —  _ old,  _ not the recent-old, or the recent-recent — times. “Sorry about this.” 

Kyungsoo just smiled. “It’s okay.” 

Jongin looked at him, and at his cake, before waving at Ae-Kyung for her to grace him with her attention. “Another coffee, please?”

She shot him an ugly look.  _ How the fuck do you dare,  _ she tried to telegraph him,  _ making me earn my money.  _ He ignored her with the practice of a wiser man. “Coming right now, sir.”

“So.” he rested his face against his right hand, looking at Kyungsoo. “What are you making of life these days?” 

**//**

Kyungsoo’s biggest suitcase was the yellow one. They bought it for their two-weeks trip for Jeju as the well-deserved vacation one year and a half back. At the time, things were a little weird, but Jongin would never believe anyone who somehow told him that Kyungsoo would use that very suitcase to put the few things he would take with him during the moving-out process. It was this one, a few boxes, Ogboon’s things, and Ogboon herself. They hadn’t argue about the custody. Possibly the  _ literal  _ one thing they didn’t discuss longley and exhaustingly about. Jongin knew she would be better with Kyungsoo, because he always remembered to fed her and take her to the vet. All Jongin ever did was help paying the bills. Even the name he didn’t get to pick. 

_ Will you come back? _ , Jongin wanted to ask him. Because he still loved him, even after everything. He didn’t, though, because he already knew the answer, and Kyungsoo was already leaving, so he didn’t need to be mean anymore, hoping for him to end this unhappy relationship once and for all. Kyungsoo was his first real love, and Jongin just didn’t have the strength necessary to walk away. He had, though, the character flaw of making things worse and wishing very hard for the other person to act on it.

Kyungsoo was crying, very quietly. He was using his sweater to dry out his cheeks. Jongin was motionless, staring at their dog as she tried to make herself scarce. She didn’t know what was happening, probably, but knew enough to realize it wasn’t good. 

That it wasn’t really good at all. 

“Do you want help”, the words were coming out of his mouth and he didn’t know how because he felt so dead inside. “with the yellow one?”

Kyungsoo looked at him, as if seeing a stranger. He had the most terrible expression on his face, and Jongin wished he had been wise like Ogboon and stayed out of the way. Finally, after a minute or two, he answered him, very flatly, “Why not.”

And Jongin helped him with the suitcase, and the boxes, and their dog, and then walked back into the building without watching Kyungsoo’s cab going away. 

The only thing he  _ did  _ let himself do, though, was stay for a moment at the hall, trying to take deep breaths, before going up all the four flights of stairs to their —  _ his  _ — apartment again. 

**//**

“I’m working at some small tech company. Handling codes, mostly, but there is real possibility that I can produce my own things soon, and be paid for it.” Kyungsoo answered him, playing with the small dessert spoon. Jongin nodded. “Are you still teaching?”

“I am. I don’t know how to do anything else, and the job here at the University is a little more stable now. I’m not so new anymore.” 

“It’s good.” Kyungsoo smiles a little at the cake. “I’m happy for you.” 

“How is she? Our, uh. Ogboon.”

“She is  _ fat. _ ” Kyungsoo grinned, looking to the world as if he was fighting every instinct of putting out his phone and showing a lot of cute pictures. “I honestly think that if I put her on a downhill she would like, roll the whole thing and end up fine. I think I must be giving her too much food, and the vet said I should stop. It isn’t good for her health.” 

“I read on the internet that pet obesity is a real problem. The ideal weight is when you can put your hand against the pet’s body and, with a small pressure, feel their ribs.” Jongin added, helpfully. 

“Oh. I think I saw something like that too.”

“It’s like, a post that went viral.”

“So it must mean that it is true.”

“Yeah, I thought so too.” 

They nodded at each other, comforted by their mutual social media skills. Ae-Kyung appeared, apparently from tin air in front of them, putting Jongin’s order in front of him with a little more force than strictly necessary. When she left, Kyungsoo glanced at him curiously. “She is a little aggressive, isn’t she?”

“More than a little.” Jongin answered, peacefully drinking his coffee. 

“Do you come here a lot?” 

“Eh, it’s close enough of work. I need daily boosts of caffein to endure my students lack of common sense. Ae-Kyung isn’t one of them, though. I think I would remember her particular brand of meanness, because it’s so true and pure that it deserves to be deeply appreciated.”

“Ae-Kyung?” he murmured, as if it were a secret. “Is that her name?”

“Yes. Yoon Ae-Kyung. But she is a little young for you, don’t you think?” 

“Uh! What! I’m not interested in her like that!”  

“Then how?”

“Jesus. Just common  _ small talk _ .” Kyungsoo leaned against his chair, still looking shell-shocked. Jongin smiled. He missed making fun of him like that. Even before their terrible final months, they weren’t in the teasing-stage for a long time. Jongin thinks he should have seen the end coming sooner. It wasn’t sudden at all. 

Ae-Kyung stared at their head, menacing, as if knowing what they were talking about and not liking it. Jongin waved at her. “She is my favorite barista. The other one is really cheerful! He gives me a headache.” 

“Ah”, Kyungsoo laughed. He looked really older like that. Not in a  _ bad  _ way; just — a way. “You never liked people being too happy around you.”

“It sounds fake, that’s all.”

“Isn’t fake part of our lives?”

“Eh, why are you throwing sociology at my face? I don’t want to hear it outside my classroom.” 

Kind of suddenly, Kyungsoo slapped his hand against the table, almost giving Jongin a heart attack. He stared at his face accusingly, having dropped his book with the movement. “Sorry”, Kyungsoo answered, not sorry at all. “I saw an ant.” 

“An ant? Here?” Jongin looked around wildly. 

“It’s okay! I killed it and already disposed of the body.” 

“Thank  _ fuck _ .” 

“Eh. You’re still terrified of ants. Some things never change.”

“People  _ phobias  _ don’t change after two years, Kyungsoo.” Jongin told him, condescending. 

“You never know.” he answered wisely. “Maybe you’re seeing a therapist too.”

“Please.” Jongin made a gesture that could mean  _ when hell freezes over  _ or also  _ I’m possibly afraid of them.  _

Kyungsoo looked a lot like he wanted to say  _ well, you should _ , but, like Jongin, he didn’t have to be mean anymore. Their marriage was very over. He had lost the right. He ended up nodding seriously and saying, “Well, a small phobia never killed anyone.” 

Jongin drank a little more of his coffee, that was getting cold, without saying anything. The music playing on the background, he realized suddenly, was some pop, melancholic tune, and it was making him a little sad. He didn’t tell Kyungsoo that. Two years in, two years out, the answer he would be given would probably still be  _ undiagnosed depression does it to people.  _

“I saw Baekhyun last month.” Jongin said after a few minutes of silence. “You know. Byun Baekhyun.”

(Baekhyun had been their “couple best friend” when they were together. He was in a very happy marriage with the man of his dreams, and in that neighbourhood, the gay couples stuck together like glue. They were always all over each other’s houses, and parties, and baptisms celebrations for one daughter or niece or other whatever. )

“Oh.” Kyungsoo answered. “I didn’t see him in ages. We didn’t exactly maintain contact after I… Uh. Moved out.”

“Me neither.” Jongin said, bravely ignoring the possibility of awkward. “I moved from there a little after that, actually.”

“Eh?”

“I wanted to be closer to campus.” 

“Was it nice?”

“Uh?”

“Seeing him again.”

“Ah.” Jongin drank what was left of his coffee. “It was weird. Everything sounded like another life entirely.” 

“Oh, I understand.” Kyungsoo nodded, as if he really did understand. Jongin didn’t call him on that, even if the small wedding band on Kyungsoo’s finger were staring right at his face all afternoon. He didn’t say anything. Not  _ What is the name of your spouse?  _ nor  _ Are you happy?  _ and definitely not  _ Happier than when you were with me? _

Two years was time enough, Jongin thought. If you knew what you wanted.

( _ A true marriage _ , Kyungsoo’s voice was small in Jongin’s head.  _ Because I’m tired of playing house. _ ) 

Do you miss me?, he almost said. Did you ever miss me?

_ When you went into that cab, did you look back once _ ? “I think I better be going.” Jongin smiled, picking up his book and his bag, waving at Ae-Kyung for the bill all at the same time. Running away like a pro, his ma would be proud. “Work waits for no man.” 

“Oh!” Kyungsoo blinked, owlish. “It was nice seeing you, Jongin. Really nice.”

“Likewise.” he answered, and meant it. “Maybe we should catch up another time. When we have more time.” 

Kyungsoo nodded. “Yes, of course!” 

Jongin smiled one more time, paid Ae-Kyung with a generous tip, and left the coffee shop without looking back — not once —, knowing very well he didn’t tell Kyungsoo his phone number and never even intended to. 

Because, well, it was already too  _ late _

— and because, every time he thought about kyungsoo, he had the bone-deep certainty that leaving jongin was the best choice he could ever made for himself. 

(when you love,

you let go)


End file.
